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Desert

Embarking on our journey with Transfer, the desert seemed to be a good metaphor for starting to recognise ideas, places and essential architectures

“In a landscape where nothing officially exists (otherwise it would not be “desert”) absolutely anything becomes thinkable and may consequently happen”. R. Banham (“Scenes in America Deserta”)

Establishing links between the desert and architecture entails imagining an object facing its antagonist, a zero degree of the exterior: infinite, extreme, mobile and incomprehensible.

It also implies recalling that which architecture possesses of protection, of the interior, of opposition to nature.

Also that, in its early days, architecture compelled the radical use of available resources: a stick and a few strips of fabric (which we can take with us: one passes through the desert, one doesn’t stay), a few rocks we come across, some worked clay.

Embarking on our journey with TRANSFER, the desert seemed to be a good metaphor for starting to recognise ideas, places and essential architectures.

Josep Lluís Mateo (Barcelona, 1949) is an architect graduated from ETSAB. He received his doctorate cum laude from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. From 2002 until 2014 he was Professor of Architecture and Design at the ETH Zürich. In 2015 he was Guest Professor at Harvard GSD. He is the author of “Bauen und Denken” (2002), “Textos Instrumentales” (2007) and director of a collective research published as “Middle East: Contemporary Architectural Conditions” (2012). His practice, mateoarquitectura, is globally active and tries to connect intelligence and artistic ambition with pragmatism and objectivity. His practice has won many prices and awards (NAN best Spanish project abroad 2010 & 2011), has been worldwide published (“Josep Lluís Mateo, Opere e progetti”, 2007, “On Building: Matter and Form”, 2012) and exhibited (MoMA, 2006, Galerie d’Architecture in Paris, 2013).